Hussein Ibish is a weekly columnist for The National (UAE) and NOW media and a senior fellow at the American Task Force on Palestine.

Second, Israeli law distinguishes between citizenship (“Israeli”) and nationality (“Jewish,” “Arab,” and so forth). Some discrimination is based on designated “nationality,” giving preference to Jewish Israelis. Some of it derives from of the duties reserved to those who have performed National Service, which is true of almost all Jewish Israelis who are required to serve and not true of almost all Arabs who are not required—and in many cases not allowed—to perform such service, such as in the military.

In addition, a whole panoply of discrimination exists in Israel against Palestinian citizens, both formal and informal, that derives from the sense that this community is fundamentally disloyal to the state and sympathetic to its Arab enemies. Restrictions on Palestinian political participation in Israel have been eased over the decades, but in recent years, particularly since the return of. Netanyahu as prime minister, the Jewish right has been attempting to create new obstacles.

The “governance law” was a case in point, but so are proposed measures such as loyalty oaths, laws asserting or defining the “Jewish character” of the Israeli state, restrictions on the funding and activities of liberal or Arab NGOs, attempts to prohibit recognition of the Palestinian Nakba (“catastrophe”) of 1947-48 or speech advocating boycotts against Israel or Israeli settlements. Among the most extraordinary restrictions is a law that prohibits Palestinians from the occupied territories or elsewhere who marry Palestinian citizens of Israel from moving to the country to live with their spouses.

All of these realities are manifestations of a deeper conundrum arising from the fact that this is a community of Arabs, most of whom identify as Palestinians, living in a “Jewish state” that has for most of its history been at war with most Palestinians and other Arabs. Israel’s Palestinians have, therefore, been viewed with suspicion by both sides, and not just Israelis. Arabs, too, have had a difficult time processing the reality of the Palestinian community of Israeli citizens.

Complicating the matter further is the growing phenomenon that further separates the question of Palestinian citizens’ rights in Israel from other aspects of the Palestinian cause and question. Some key right-wing figures in Israel, including current President Ruven Rivlin, and longtime right-wing activist Moshe Ahrens, are among the most outspoken Jewish Israeli proponents of equal rights for Palestinians, but are also categorically opposed to the creation of a Palestinian state. Neither man has explained precisely what his vision is for the Palestinians in the occupied territories, but both are on record as strong proponents of equality for Israel’s Arab citizens.

In reality, a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is surely essential for the long-term well-being of the Palestinian citizens of Israel. Nothing else frees them from the stigma and suspicion that otherwise clouds the way in which they are regarded by their Jewish compatriots in Israel. And nothing can make them more useful or dynamic contributors to achieving a two-state solution, which remains the only identifiable means of practically and viably resolving the conflict, than for this community to empower themselves within the Israeli political system. Perhaps their strongest asset is the fact that they can vote in Israel, and therefore have a direct, rather than an indirect (as is the case with most Palestinians), means of impacting Israeli-decision-making.

As things stand there is an inherently self-defeating quality to this new, unified and more powerful political organization. Even when the Zionist Union and Likud were running neck and neck in the polls at 27 each and the Joint List was projected to come in third with 14 or 15 seats, no one had identified them as the logical kingmakers in the aftermath of the balloting. That role was always, and still is, assigned to Moshe Kahlon’s Kulanu Party, which has a mere ten seats.

The simple fact is that an Arab political grouping like the Joint List would not be invited to join directly and formally with a ruling Israeli coalition government. Jewish Israelis would fear that the presence of a major Palestinian partner in a coalition government would undermine the credibility of that government. Israelis are simply not ready to accord their Arab citizens that much power. The Palestinian citizens of Israel, meanwhile, would almost certainly decline to join a coalition because of their objection to so much of Israel’s policies, particularly the occupation.

Even so, there have been countless Israeli politicians and parties that have categorically oppose the occupation and have nonetheless served in governments that persisted with it. They objected, but understood that they did not have the power, on their own, to end it. Arab parties in Israel are not yet ready to take that plunge. But if the List can sustain its coalition and continue to hold at least 14 seats or so in any given Knesset, over time its role will be difficult to ignore.

This is a new idea, one that everyone will have to get used to, especially as growth rates among Israeli citizens slightly favor Arab demographics over Jewish ones, 2.2 to 1.7 percent. Yet the deeper question is not the gradual development of a somewhat larger Arab minority within the internationally recognized boundaries of Israel. That question is, what of the millions of Palestinians living under Israeli rule but without the right to vote? If Netanyahu is correct, and Israel cannot and will not allow the creation of a Palestinian state, how long can it continue to forbid those millions from the right to participate in forming the government that rules them? If there is already, as the statistics suggest, a majority of non-Jews in the territories under direct Israeli control, and most of that constituency is disenfranchised and stateless, how long will that remain plausibly viable?

It’s easy enough to argue that the existing de facto “greater Israel” is already neither “Jewish” nor “democratic.” It’s not Jewish because it doesn’t have a Jewish majority already. And it’s not democratic because it denies millions of its permanent residents and de facto citizens the right to vote.

The performance of the Joint List should already be focusing Jewish Israeli attention on these questions. Because it raises the prospect not only of increased political power for the Palestinian citizens of Israel, but also the long-term potential of political power of those currently denied access to the ballot box. If this is a sobering prospect for Jewish Israelis, and it should be, the emergence of the Joint List itself begins to offer a way out. The List favors a two-state solution. So do the Palestinian Authority and the Palestine Liberation Organization. And so does a majority of Palestinians in the occupied territories. For all of Netanyahu’s ill-conceived bluster, there is still a way out. But Israelis have just had a small preview of what’s possible if that prospect isn’t pursued with seriousness and vigor. Whether it is the gradual accumulation of power by the Palestinian citizens of Israel working together as a determined minority in the de jure Israel—or even the specter of the potential clout of an Arab majority in the de facto Israel—the Joint List is undoubtedly a harbinger of things to come.